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Intel updates Itanium line with 9500 series

Chip maker keeps plugging away with platform, with new line aimed at mission-critical systems

Intel has released the latest generation of its Itanium server processor line, the Itanium 9500 series, designed for maximum uptime and mission-critical deployments.

The 9500 series will feature what Intel says is a 2.4 fold increase in performance and a doubling of transistors. Additionally, the company said that the chip will offer a 33 percent boost in I/O speeds.

The 9500 series will double Itanium's core capacity from four to eight and will also include 54MB of on-board memory and an additional 2TB of external RAM.

The company said that the new Itanium chips would target what Intel sees as a growing need for maximum uptime and highly reliable platforms such as Itanium in the enterprise space.

"In a world where businesses are increasingly dependent on IT for their competitive advantage, more and more business applications are rightfully called 'mission critical'; they must be always available, highly responsive and extremely reliable," said Intel datacentre and connected systems group general manager, Diane Bryant.

"It is for precisely these computing workloads that we have developed the Intel Itanium 9500 processor."

The 9500 chips will be the last Itanium release before the company initiates a modular development strategy which will see the Itanium and Xeon brands share common chipset and interconnect hardware.

Intel hopes that the development model, slated to arrive with the next-generation Kittson Itanium chips, will help to boost developer interest in Itanium.

Despite Intel's efforts to push the platform in the mission-critical space, the platform has fallen short of its lofty expectations. In 2011 Oracle announced its intent to wind down support for Itanium, publicly questioning Intel's commitment to developing the platform.

With support from HP and a high-profile courtroom loss, however, Oracle was eventually forced to maintain support for Itanium.